Credit: Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Photographs and Prints Division Media type: engraving Museum Number: Annotation: With the rise in the number of runaway slaves and the growing size of the Underground Railroad, which offered aid and passage for enslaved Africans to escape the south, came institution of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Designed to…

Credit: Library of Congress Media type: engraving Museum Number: LC-USZC2-1716 Annotation: From the day the Bay of San Francisco was discovered by Don Gaspar de Portolá in 1769, the city and port of San Francisco has remained large and influential hub of commerce and culture in California. This image depicts the city as it appeared in 1851, just months…

Credit: Library of Congress Media type: engraving Museum Number: LC-USZ62-28860 Annotation: This image depicts a number of escaped slaves being aided in their journey to freedom by white Americans in what was termed the “Underground Railroad”. The Underground Railroad represented a uniquely American form of cooperation between different people and races whose ideals and beliefs varied greatly and often…

Credit: University of Chicago Library, Special Collections Research Center Media type: engraving Museum Number: Annotation: This engraving shows an elder Boone hunting with his dog. Boone had been dead for 40 years when this engraving was published, but Boone’s adventures, real and mythical, formed the basis of the archetypal hero of the American West, popular in 19th century…

Credit: Library of Congress Media type: engraving Museum Number: LC-USZC4-6126 Annotation: The battle of Palo Alto, the first major engagement of the Mexican War, was fought north of Brownsville on May 8, 1846, between American forces under Gen. Zachary Taylor and Mexican troops commanded by Gen. Mariano Arista. Earlier, on April 23, Mexico had proclaimed a “defensive war” against…

Credit: Clotel: The President’s Daughter: A Narrative of Slave Life in the United States. by William Wells Brown Media type: engraving Museum Number: Annotation: The novel opens with the auction of Currer, the supposed mistress of Thomas Jefferson, and their two daughters, Clotel and Althesa, and highlights the horrifying injustices to mixed-race individuals under slavery. Horatio Green, the son…

Credit: Library of Congress Media type: engraving Museum Number: LC-USZC2-1755 Annotation: This lithograph shows miners shoveling sand from stream into sluice while one miner pans for gold in the same stream, small building and mountains in the background. The gold rush was over when this lithograp was published in 1871. On January 24, 1848, less than 10 days before…

Credit: Library of Congress Media type: engraving Museum Number: LC-USZ62-6228 Annotation: After losing Monterrey to American forces in September of 1846 Antonio Lopez De Santa, who had returned from exile in to seize power in Mexico City, raised a force of 25000 men to engage American Major General Zachary Taylor in a mountain pass in Buena Vista, Mexico. The…

Credit: Hope Greenberg, University of Vermont Media type: engraving Museum Number: Annotation: An engraving showing a child taking his/her first steps. Godey’s Lady’s Book enjoyed tremendous popularity in the 19th century as a monthly periodical intended primarily for women. Each issue featured articles on ladies fashion, images of engraved artwork, and poetry by prominent artists of the period.…